# Is Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve Course Worth It in 2026?

> **Quick answer:** Yes, if you want technically exhaustive, feature-by-feature training from a 20-plus-year post-production studio. Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve courses run $278 to $495 individually, cheaper bundled at $179 to $320, but they're still built on DaVinci Resolve 20, one version behind Resolve 21, and refunds are case-by-case store credit, not cash.

*Published by [TryUncle](https://tryuncle.com) — the on-screen assistant that teaches DaVinci Resolve on your own screen.*
*Updated 2026-07-30 · Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve Learning Path, DaVinci Resolve 21, and TryUncle pricing (July 2026) · Canonical: https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/is-ripple-training-s-davinci-resolve-course-worth-it*

Somebody in the DaVinci Resolve Learning Group asks a version of this every few months, usually with a screenshot of Ripple Training's bundle page open in another tab. Is Ripple Training actually the deeper, more technical option, or just an older name that shows up first in search? Fair question. Ripple Training doesn't run flashy marketing, doesn't have a 50,000-student badge on its listing, and doesn't show up on Udemy at all. It sells directly, at full price, and expects you to trust its reputation instead of its discount banner.

I run that Learning Group, a community that's grown past 100,000 editors, and I also built TryUncle, the on-screen assistant for DaVinci Resolve. I'll put that on the table before you read another sentence, since it shapes what I'm about to tell you. This review isn't trying to talk you out of Ripple Training's catalog. Most of what's publicly verifiable about it looks legitimate and, in places, genuinely impressive. It's trying to tell you exactly what you'd be buying, what it actually costs once you add up every course you'd need, and where a pre-recorded course, any pre-recorded course, stops being able to help you.

## Who is behind Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve course?

Ripple Training is a small, independent training studio, not a marketplace like Udemy or Skillshare. It was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Prescott, Arizona, and as of May 2026 it runs with 6 employees and no outside funding, according to [Tracxn's company profile](https://tracxn.com/d/companies/ripple-training/__TVpxFcgPEmitcK3411ExsXoKTXYdeF2S3HhIIdiEMcM). That's worth sitting with for a second. This isn't a platform hosting thousands of instructors competing for algorithm placement. It's one studio, built around a handful of named people, selling directly off its own site.

The founder is Steve Martin, who has over 20 years of experience as an editor, educator, and producer and has consulted or trained for Apple, Adobe, Blackmagic Design, Disney, Canon, and Sony, according to [his own instructor page](https://www.rippletraining.com/instructors/steve-martin/). That last name on the list matters more than it might look at first glance. Blackmagic Design is the company that builds DaVinci Resolve. A trainer who has consulted directly for the software's own maker has a different kind of access to how the tool is meant to be used than an instructor who only learned it from the outside, the same way a car mechanic trained by the manufacturer sees things a self-taught shade-tree mechanic sometimes misses. Martin teaches the two foundational tutorials in Ripple's DaVinci Resolve catalog, the Core Training and the Color Grading course.

He's not the only name behind the catalog. Mark Spencer, a freelance producer, editor, and motion graphics artist with an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, teaches Ripple's Fusion tutorials. He's an Apple-certified instructor and the author or co-author of five books on Motion published by Peachpit Press, and he's written for DV Magazine, ProVideo Coalition, and kenstone.net. Travis Richmond, who joined Ripple Training in 2012 as a voiceover editor and was later promoted to senior editor, teaches the sound-editing tutorials built around DaVinci Resolve's Fairlight page. **Ripple Training isn't one instructor's personal brand. It's a small team of specialists, each teaching the page of Resolve closest to their own actual craft.**

## What does Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve course lineup actually include?

It's not one course. It's a five-part curriculum Ripple Training itself calls the "DaVinci Resolve Learning Path," and each part is sold as its own standalone product with its own price, according to [Ripple Training's own category page](https://www.rippletraining.com/product-category/davinci-resolve-learning-path/). Here's the full lineup as it currently exists:

| Tutorial | Instructor | Version it's built on | Focus |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DaVinci Resolve 20 Core Training | Steve Martin | DaVinci Resolve 20 | Full workflow: import, edit, color, mix, deliver |
| Color Grading in DaVinci Resolve 20 | Steve Martin | DaVinci Resolve 20 | Primary and secondary grading, scopes, LUTs |
| Media Management in DaVinci Resolve 19 | Steve Martin | DaVinci Resolve 19 | Playback performance, remote editing prep, backups |
| Sound Editing in Fairlight Resolve 18 | Travis Richmond | DaVinci Resolve 18 | Trimming, moving, mixing, and delivering audio |
| Warp Speed Fusion in DaVinci Resolve 16/17 | Mark Spencer | DaVinci Resolve 16/17 | Nodal compositing basics and motion graphics |

Look at that "version it's built on" column closely, because it's the single most important structural fact in this whole review. **Ripple Training's five-course Learning Path spans five different DaVinci Resolve version eras, from 16/17 all the way up to 20, inside one catalog you're supposed to treat as a coherent curriculum.** That's a genuinely different situation than Casey Faris's four CreativeLive courses, all recorded on a single version (Resolve 17), or Adi Singh's Skillshare masterclass, sold under one version title even if the chapter count suggests it's carried forward largely unchanged. Ripple's catalog doesn't pretend to be unified. It's an accumulation of separately produced tutorials, each frozen at whatever version was current when it was filmed, sold together as a path.

That's not automatically a bad thing. The core editing and color grading skills taught in a Resolve 18 or 19 tutorial mostly still transfer, the same way the fundamentals in Casey Faris's Resolve 17 courses do. But it does mean nobody buying the full Learning Path should expect a menu-accurate walkthrough of a single, current version of the software. You're buying five separate snapshots in time, not one film.

## What's inside the DaVinci Resolve 20 Core Training course?

This is the flagship, and the one most beginners would actually buy first. It's built as an introductory tutorial that assumes no prior knowledge and walks through the complete Resolve workflow from initial media import to final output, according to [the course's own product page](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-20-core-training/). Structurally, it follows Resolve's own page order: start with editing a piece in the Cut Page, move to the Edit Page to build real trimming skills, work through the Color Page for basic correction, cover the Fairlight Page for audio mixing, and get an introduction to Fusion, Resolve's node-based compositing tool.

That page-by-page structure is a sensible way to teach a piece of software this sprawling. DaVinci Resolve isn't one app in the way a lot of competing editors are. It's genuinely seven distinct tools, editing, color, audio, and compositing, bundled under one window, and a beginner's biggest early obstacle is usually just knowing which page to be in for which task. Steve Martin's Core Training is built specifically to solve that first, most basic confusion before it teaches anything deeper.

**A course built by someone who has consulted for the software's own maker tends to explain the "why" behind a menu, not just the "where."** That's the value proposition Martin's Blackmagic Design consulting history implies, and it's a real point of differentiation from an instructor who's never had that kind of access, even a very good one. Whether that access actually shows up lesson to lesson isn't something this review can verify without the full video content behind Ripple's paywall, but it's a credible, checkable claim about the instructor, not marketing copy invented for a listing page.

## What's inside Color Grading in DaVinci Resolve 20?

Where the Core Training is broad, this second tutorial goes deep on exactly one page. It's built to teach how to leverage DaVinci Resolve 20's color grading tool set to improve both the quality of a shot and the speed you can work at, designed for beginning-to-intermediate users who already have basic familiarity with Resolve's interface, according to [Ripple Training's own listing](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/color-grading-in-davinci-resolve-20/).

That's a meaningfully different starting point than the Core Training, and it's worth being clear-eyed about the order these two are meant to be taken in. The Core Training is the true zero-to-one course. Color Grading in DaVinci Resolve 20 assumes you've already cleared that bar and are ready to go past "how do I make this clip brighter" into primary and secondary correction, scope-driven judgment, and grading speed. If you buy Color Grading first, hoping it'll also teach you the interface from scratch, you're buying the wrong tutorial for where you actually are.

**The Color Page is where DaVinci Resolve's reputation as the industry's default grading tool actually gets earned, and it's also where a beginner's course can do the most damage if it skips the fundamentals of reading a waveform or a vectorscope before it gets to the fun part.** Ripple Training's structure at least gets the sequencing right: fundamentals first, in the Core Training, then depth, in this second course, rather than trying to cram both into one sprawling video.

## What's in the rest of the Learning Path: Media Management, Sound Editing, and Fusion?

The three remaining tutorials are narrower and older, and each solves a specific, real problem that a general beginner course usually skips.

**Media Management in DaVinci Resolve 19** covers improving playback performance, preparing a project for remote editing, and backing up your work properly, according to [its own product page](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/media-management-in-davinci-resolve-19/). This is the unglamorous, unsexy part of post-production that most beginner courses barely touch, and it's exactly the kind of thing that turns into a real crisis on a real project: a corrupted database, a lost render, a collaborator whose proxies don't relink. If you've ever heard a horror story about someone losing an entire cut, it usually traces back to something this specific tutorial is built to prevent.

**Sound Editing in Fairlight Resolve 18**, taught by Travis Richmond, teaches how to trim, move, and copy clips between tracks, then sweeten, mix, and deliver a professional soundtrack inside Resolve's Fairlight page. Audio is the single most under-taught skill in general editing education, across every course covered by this hub, and having a dedicated, specialist-taught tutorial for it, rather than one rushed chapter bolted onto a general bootcamp, is a genuine structural advantage of Ripple's Learning Path approach.

**Warp Speed Fusion in DaVinci Resolve 16/17**, at 2 hours and 20 minutes, is built to get an absolute beginner up to speed in Fusion with maximum efficiency, teaching nodal compositing basics and simple motion graphics and visual effects shots. Fusion is the page that intimidates the most editors before they even open it, node-based compositing looks nothing like a timeline, and a short, targeted "warp speed" course aimed specifically at getting past that intimidation barrier is a smart, honest scope for a single tutorial rather than trying to cover professional-grade VFX compositing in the same runtime.

| Tutorial | What it actually solves |
| --- | --- |
| Media Management (Resolve 19) | Playback lag, remote-editing setup, and backup discipline before a project gets lost |
| Sound Editing (Fairlight, Resolve 18) | Turning a rough audio pass into a mixed, deliverable soundtrack |
| Warp Speed Fusion (Resolve 16/17) | Getting past Fusion's intimidating node-based interface for the first time |

**None of these three tutorials teach a beginner's first edit. They teach the specific, narrow skills that only become urgent once you've already made a few projects and hit a real, specific wall.** That's a meaningfully different value proposition than a general bootcamp's "everything in one course" pitch, and it's arguably the most useful part of Ripple's whole catalog for someone past their first month with the software.

## How much does Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve course actually cost?

More than most of the alternatives this hub has reviewed, and it's worth laying the real numbers out before anything else. Ripple Training doesn't sell a subscription. Every tutorial is a one-time purchase, and the studio bundles its most popular combinations at a discount.

| Option | What you get | Individual price | Bundled price |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DaVinci Resolve Essentials Bundle | Core Training + Color Grading, 12 hours total | $278 combined | $179 (35% off, $99 saved) |
| DaVinci Resolve Masters Bundle | All 5 Learning Path tutorials, 20 hours total | $495 combined | $320 (35% off, $175 saved) |

Both figures come straight from Ripple Training's own bundle pages, [the Essentials Bundle](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-essentials-bundle/) and [the Masters Bundle](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-masters-bundle/). That's a 35% discount either way, applied consistently across both tiers, and it's a genuinely meaningful saving if you already know you want more than one tutorial. Buying the two foundational courses one at a time instead of through the Essentials Bundle costs an extra $99 for nothing but the inconvenience of two separate checkouts.

Set that next to what the rest of this niche charges. Casey Faris's flagship Ground Control End to End course runs $249.99 for 18-plus hours. Adi Singh's near-identical Udemy masterclass runs $14.99. Blackmagic's own official training is free. **Ripple Training's full five-course path, at $320 bundled, costs more than Casey Faris's entire flagship course and about 21 times what Adi Singh's Udemy version costs, for a smaller total runtime than either.** That's not a knock on quality, the content inside genuinely might justify a higher price. It's a fact worth having in front of you before you check out, since none of Ripple's product pages put that comparison in front of you themselves.

For reference, DaVinci Resolve Studio itself, the paid tier of the software these courses teach, is a one-time $295 purchase with no subscription, according to [Blackmagic's own Studio page](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/studio). The Masters Bundle, at $320, costs slightly more than the software it's teaching you to use.

## Can you buy fewer than all five tutorials, and still save?

Not everyone needs all five tutorials in the Learning Path, and Ripple Training's own checkout accounts for that. Alongside the two preset bundles, Essentials and Masters, the studio runs a tiered "build your own bundle" discount that applies automatically the moment you add a second tutorial to your cart: buy any 2 tutorials and save 10%, buy 3 and save 15%, buy 4 or more and save 20%, according to Ripple Training's own [Learning Path category page](https://www.rippletraining.com/product-category/davinci-resolve-learning-path/).

That matters because the two preset bundles assume you want everything they contain. Maybe you don't. If you edit corporate video and never touch node-based compositing, the Fusion tutorial in the Masters Bundle is dead weight. If you cut alone and someone else mixes your audio, Sound Editing in Fairlight Resolve 18 might not earn its place either.

Say you only want the two foundational courses plus Media Management, because you've already had one drive-corruption scare and never want another. Buy those three separately and the tiered discount saves you 15% off the combined total, the same underlying math a preset bundle uses, just built around the specific three tutorials you actually want instead of a fixed set someone else chose. **Ripple Training's tiered discount means skipping a course you don't need doesn't cost you the bundle savings, provided you still buy at least two.** The one scenario where a custom bundle doesn't help is buying a single tutorial alone. There, you're paying full individual price no matter which one you pick, since the discount tiers only start at two.

A custom bundle is the better math when:

- You genuinely won't use one of the five tutorials, most often Fusion, if you never composite
- You're buying exactly 2 or 3 tutorials, where the preset Essentials Bundle doesn't apply anyway
- You already own one tutorial from a previous sale and only need to add one or two more

The preset Masters Bundle is the better math when:

- You want all five tutorials anyway, since 35% off beats the custom tier's maximum 20%
- You're brand new to Resolve and don't yet know which topics you'll actually need

Worth checking before you build a custom bundle instead of a preset one: the Essentials and Masters bundles are discounted 35% off the combined individual price, steeper than even the "4 or more" custom tier's 20%. A custom bundle of four tutorials, at 20% off, generally comes out more expensive per tutorial than committing to the full five-tutorial Masters Bundle at 35% off, which is worth doing the arithmetic on before you check out.

## Can you get a refund if Ripple Training isn't the right fit?

This is where Ripple Training's offer is genuinely weaker than most of its competitors, and it deserves to be stated as plainly as the strengths above. According to [Ripple Training's own FAQ](https://www.rippletraining.com/blog/faq-items/what-is-ripple-trainings-return-policy/), **refunds are dealt with on a case by case basis and for store credit only.** Not cash back, and not a stated, guaranteed window you can rely on before you buy.

Compare that to what the rest of this review's competitive set offers. Casey Faris's $249.99 Ground Control End to End course advertises a 30-day, no-questions-asked full refund on its own course page. Skillshare's trial terms are narrower than that, but at least published as a specific number: a 7-day trial qualifying for a refund if requested within 48 hours of the charge. Ripple Training publishes no specific day count at all, just a case-by-case review that ends, at best, in credit toward another Ripple purchase rather than money back in your account.

| Seller | Refund terms |
| --- | --- |
| Ripple Training | Case by case, store credit only, no stated window |
| Casey Faris, Ground Control End to End | 30 days, full cash refund, stated "no questions asked" |
| Casey Faris, CreativeLive courses | No refund on individual purchase; one exchange within 7 days |
| Adi Singh, Skillshare | 7-day trial refund only if requested within 48 hours of charge |
| Adi Singh, Udemy | Udemy's standard 30-day refund policy applies platform-wide |

**A store-credit-only, case-by-case policy means the real financial risk of buying the wrong tutorial sits entirely on you, not on Ripple Training.** If you're not sure the Core Training is pitched at the right level for you, or whether the Color Grading course assumes more prior knowledge than you actually have, that uncertainty is worth resolving before checkout, not after, since a disappointing purchase here doesn't come back as cash even if you never open the video player.

## Can you download Ripple Training's videos, or do you have to stream them?

Every other course in this review is stream-only, or download-optional through a third-party host. Ripple Training's own Ripple Online Player supports both. Purchased tutorials play back on any internet-connected computer, tablet, or phone, and each lesson can also be downloaded individually inside the player's "View Offline" tab for watching without a connection, according to [Ripple Training's own support documentation on downloading lessons](https://www.rippletraining.com/blog/faq-items/how-do-i-download-the-lessons-for-my-tutorial/).

The catch is worth knowing before you rely on it for a flight or a location shoot with no signal. Offline, downloaded viewing doesn't feed back into Ripple's own progress tracker, and it doesn't count toward the 80% completion threshold that unlocks the link to Blackmagic Design's certification exam covered later in this review. **If you're working toward Ripple Training's certification pathway, the lessons you watch offline don't move you any closer to it, only the ones tracked through the online player do.** If certification isn't the goal, downloading a whole tutorial before a long trip is a straightforward, sensible way to keep working through it without needing a stable connection.

## Is Ripple Training's course updated for DaVinci Resolve 21, or still built on version 20?

Still on version 20 for the flagship, and that's the honest, current answer as of this review. DaVinci Resolve 21 shipped in June 2026 after a record seven-week public beta. It wasn't a small point update: it added an entirely new Photo page for still-image workflows, new AI tools including IntelliSearch for content search and CineFocus for focal adjustment, an AI voice generator, more than 100 new Fusion motion graphics effects, and a new folder function in Fairlight, according to [PetaPixel's coverage of the release](https://petapixel.com/2026/06/03/davinci-resolve-21-officially-released-with-new-photo-editing-ai-tools-and-much-more/). None of that existed when Ripple Training's current Core Training was filmed.

That puts Ripple one version behind on its newest, most-updated course, which is actually a better position than most of the catalog covered in this whole hub. Casey Faris's CreativeLive courses sit four versions behind, still on Resolve 17. Adi Singh's Skillshare "21" listing shares its exact chapter count with his own "20"-titled Udemy course, suggesting the underlying content didn't meaningfully change even though the title did. Ripple Training, by contrast, has actually re-titled and, presumably, re-recorded its Core Training and Color Grading tutorials at least once per major version, which is a genuine signal of ongoing maintenance rather than a static product coasting on an old title.

**One version behind is a real gap, but it's the smallest gap in this entire comparison set, and it's the only one in this review earned by actually updating the course rather than just renaming it.** The catch, covered in the section above, is that this discipline only applies to the two newest tutorials. Media Management, Sound Editing, and Warp Speed Fusion haven't received the same version-to-version refresh, and sit three, four, and roughly six major versions behind Resolve 21 respectively.

## Does Ripple Training's course lead to an actual certification?

Yes, and this is a real, concrete feature that neither Casey Faris's nor Adi Singh's catalog offers directly. Completing 80% of the DaVinci Resolve Core Training unlocks a link to sit Blackmagic Design's own certification exam, according to [Ripple Training's support documentation](https://support.rippletraining.com/article/77-dvr-18-test-faqs). Here's exactly what that exam involves:

| Detail | Specification |
| --- | --- |
| Trigger | Complete 80% of the Core Training tutorial |
| Question count | 50 questions, randomly drawn from a pool of 120 |
| Time limit | 60 minutes |
| Passing score | 85% |
| Format | Open book |
| Credential earned | Certificate of Achievement, "Certified End User" designation |

Worth being fully honest about what this is and isn't. This isn't a certification Ripple Training invented or controls. It's Blackmagic Design's own exam, the same one covered in our reviews of Casey Faris and the Skillshare masterclass, and it's freely available to anyone who studies Blackmagic's own free training materials, no Ripple purchase required. What Ripple Training adds isn't the certification itself. It's a direct, built-in path from finishing the Core Training to sitting that exam, which removes a step a self-taught student would otherwise have to find on their own.

**Blackmagic's own certification exam is free either way. Buying Ripple Training's Core Training gets you a guided runway toward it, not exclusive access to it.** That distinction matters if the "certification" language on Ripple's product page is a deciding factor in your purchase, since the credential itself costs nothing regardless of which course, if any, you take first.

## What do independent reviewers actually say about Ripple Training?

The strongest independent review this research turned up is nearly a decade old, which is itself worth being upfront about. Jonny Elwyn, a working film editor who reviews training courses on his own site, wrote a detailed review of the DaVinci Resolve 14-era Ripple Training course back in 2017, when the instructor was Alexis Van Hurkman, not Steve Martin. **"No one knows DaVinci Resolve like Alexis does, and no one else seems to have his inside access to Blackmagic Design's thinking and planning,"** Elwyn wrote, praising the course's exhaustive, feature-by-feature depth and calling Ripple Training's own video player and course organization "so good" it was worth discussing in detail on its own, [in his own words](https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/davinci-resolve-14-training-courses-reviewed/).

Elwyn's one real criticism was length: at 53 lessons across 7 hours and 47 minutes for that specific course, the sheer exhaustiveness that made it "the manual on video" could also overwhelm a viewer looking for something faster and more targeted. That's a structural trade-off worth carrying forward into today's Core Training, since depth and speed pull against each other in course design generally.

There's an honest gap worth naming here too: that review is about an instructor no longer teaching Ripple's current Resolve catalog. Alexis Van Hurkman isn't listed as the instructor on today's DaVinci Resolve 20 Core Training or Color Grading pages; Steve Martin is. Whether Martin's teaching style earns the same "no one knows this like he does" praise Elwyn gave Van Hurkman isn't something this review can independently verify without paying for the current course.

What is verifiable more recently: on the Blackmagic Design Forum, a long-running community of professional colorists and editors, users recommending resources for learning DaVinci Resolve regularly name Ripple Training in the same breath as Mixing Light, FXPHD, and Lowepost, describing Mark Spencer's Ripple Training tutorials specifically as "very thorough and technical," and noting Ripple Training as one of the few places online currently authorized to administer Blackmagic Design's own certified training exam, per [that forum thread](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=192139). **A near-decade-old review and a forum thread both converge on the same word: thorough.** That's a consistent reputation across two different eras of the product, even if neither source is reviewing the exact course on sale today.

## Worked example: how a course like this teaches primary color correction, and what happens on your own footage

Theory lands better against one specific tool. Take a primary color correction node, the first, most fundamental grading move in the Color Page, adjusting lift, gamma, and gain to set the overall exposure and tone of a shot before anything creative happens on top of it.

In a course structured the way Ripple's Color Grading tutorial is described, a shot gets picked specifically because it demonstrates the concept cleanly: even lighting, a clear subject, scopes that move in a legible, predictable way as the wheels get adjusted. That's the right pedagogical choice. It lets a viewer connect what they see on the waveform monitor to what they see on the shot, in real time, without a confusing edge case muddying the lesson. It's exactly the kind of exhaustive, "explain every parameter" approach Jonny Elwyn praised in his 2017 review of Ripple's earlier catalog.

Your own footage rarely offers that same cooperation. A clip shot into a window with blown highlights on one side and crushed shadow on the other doesn't respond to lift, gamma, and gain the same predictable way a clean demo clip does. Push the gain wheel to recover the highlights and the shadow side clips even further into black. Pull the lift wheel to open the shadows and the highlight side washes out worse. **A course teaches you what each wheel does in isolation. It can't show you the specific fight your specific shot's dynamic range picks with those wheels**, because the demo clip in the video was chosen precisely to avoid that fight.

That's not a flaw unique to Ripple Training's teaching. It's the same structural ceiling every pre-recorded color grading lesson shares, the same one our [review of Casey Faris's Fusion and color courses](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/is-casey-faris-davinci-resolve-course-worth-it) walks through with a different tool. An instructor has to pick one clip. That clip can't anticipate every way your own footage will misbehave once you try the same move on it.

## Worked example: what a "Warp Speed" Fusion course teaches, and where a real composite gets harder

The color-correction example above applies just as directly to Ripple Training's Fusion tutorial, and it's worth walking through separately, because Fusion's node-based interface breaks in its own specific way once you leave the course.

Warp Speed Fusion in DaVinci Resolve 16/17 is built, by its own description, to get an absolute beginner up to speed with maximum efficiency, teaching nodal compositing basics through simple, contained exercises: a title card that flies in, a basic color key pulled off a clean green screen, a simple particle effect layered over a static background. Those exercises work as teaching tools for exactly the reason the color-grading demo clip does. The green screen is evenly lit, the title card element is pre-built with clean alpha, the background doesn't move in a way that fights the effect. A beginner can watch one node get added, see exactly what it changed in the viewer, and build a mental model of how Fusion's node tree flows from left to right.

Your own footage rarely hands you a clean green screen. Say you're keying out a subject shot against a wrinkled bedsheet standing in for a proper screen, lit by one window instead of even studio lighting. The chroma keyer node that pulled a perfect key on the course's demo footage leaves visible spill on one side of the subject and eats into their hair on the other, because the actual color values in your shot's shadows and highlights aren't uniform the way the demo clip's were. **A Fusion course teaches you what a keyer node does. It can't teach you the specific spill suppression and edge refinement your specific lighting setup will need**, because that combination of bad lighting, bedsheet texture, and subject hair color isn't a scenario the course's clean demo clip was built to demonstrate.

Node order is another place a warp-speed course can't cover every mistake a beginner will actually make. Fusion's Merge node treats its two inputs differently, one is the background, one is the foreground, and plugging your shots into the wrong slots flips which layer sits on top without any error message telling you why the composite looks wrong. It's common enough that we've written a [separate troubleshooting guide to a Merge node with its background and foreground swapped](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-fusion-merge-node-background-foreground-backwards), because it's exactly the kind of mistake a course demo, built around one correctly-wired example, doesn't train you to recognize on your own project.

This is also where DaVinci Resolve 21's roughly 100 new Fusion motion graphics effects, added after Ripple's Warp Speed Fusion tutorial was filmed on Resolve 16/17, widen the gap between the course and your project, not just the interface. A course filmed before those effects existed can't walk you through using them, since they didn't exist yet, according to [PetaPixel's coverage of the Resolve 21 release](https://petapixel.com/2026/06/03/davinci-resolve-21-officially-released-with-new-photo-editing-ai-tools-and-much-more/) cited earlier in this review. If the reason you bought Warp Speed Fusion was to learn one of those newer effects specifically, the course can't help, no matter how well it teaches the underlying node logic.

None of that makes the tutorial useless. **Nodal compositing logic, once learned, transfers to new effects added years after the course was filmed**, the same way understanding how lift, gamma, and gain interact transfers to a shot the color grading course never showed you. What a fixed video can't do, on Fusion or on the Color page, is react to the specific way your specific shot breaks the pattern the demo clip was built to avoid.

## How does Ripple Training compare to Blackmagic's own free official training?

Blackmagic Design, the company that builds DaVinci Resolve, publishes its own complete curriculum for free: six downloadable training books, including a 640-page Beginner's Guide covering editing, color correction, audio, and visual effects, plus a dedicated Editor's Guide, Fairlight Audio Guide, Colorist Guide, Visual Effects Guide, and Advanced Visual Effects Guide, according to [RedShark News's coverage of the guide series](https://www.redsharknews.com/blackmagic-davinci-resolve-20-training-guides) and [Blackmagic's own training page](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/training). All six are free as downloadable PDFs, with printed versions running $30 to $60 on Amazon and Kindle editions around $5, and each comes with lesson project files and access to that same certification exam covered above.

That's not really a competing product so much as a different resource entirely. Blackmagic's guides are ground truth, written by the people who built the software, and they update alongside new releases without the version-drift question this review raised earlier. What they don't offer is Steve Martin's or Mark Spencer's specific teaching voice, walking through why a professional makes one grading decision over another, or Travis Richmond narrating what a mix actually sounds like as he builds it. A written manual, however good, can't do that the way a video course can.

**Blackmagic's free training gives you the same facts a paid course teaches, minus the instructor's judgment calls, minus the cost.** For anyone weighing whether to spend $179 to $320 on Ripple Training at all, working through Blackmagic's own free guides first is the obvious, zero-risk starting point, and it directly answers the "is Ripple Training worth the money" question for your own specific learning style before you spend anything.

## How does Ripple Training compare to Casey Faris and the Skillshare and Udemy masterclasses?

Here's the full picture, collapsed into the honest, structured comparison this niche doesn't otherwise have in one place.

| Factor | Ripple Training | Casey Faris (CreativeLive/Ground Control) | Adi Singh (Skillshare/Udemy/Coursera) | Blackmagic's free training |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Instructor credibility | Steve Martin (20+ yrs, consulted for Blackmagic Design itself); Mark Spencer (Apple-certified, Wharton MBA); Travis Richmond (senior editor since 2012) | Blackmagic Certified Trainer, ResolveCon co-founder, working editor and colorist | Skillshare Top Teacher, claimed 50,000+ students across platforms | Written directly by Blackmagic Design |
| Flagship structure | 5-tutorial Learning Path, page-by-page, spanning Resolve 16 through 20 | 4 short CreativeLive courses (Resolve 17) plus a real-production flagship course | 48-chapter page-by-page masterclass | 6 free downloadable guides |
| Price | $278-$495 individually, $179-$320 bundled | Free (YouTube) to $1,197 (Film School) | Free (Skillshare subscription) to $14.99 (Udemy) | Free |
| Refund policy | Case by case, store credit only, no stated window | 30 days, full cash refund (End to End course) | 48hrs-7 days, narrow (Skillshare); Udemy's standard policy applies | Not applicable |
| Newest-course version currency | One version behind (Resolve 20 vs. 21) | Four versions behind (Resolve 17) | Titled "21," but chapter count matches the "20" version | Updated per release |
| Direct certification path | Yes, links to Blackmagic's own exam at 80% completion | Not offered directly | Not offered directly | Exam included free |
| Public numeric rating | None published | Consistently positive review samples, no aggregate score | 4.2-4.3/5 across Udemy and Coursera versions | Not applicable |

Read straight down that table and a clear pattern holds. **Ripple Training wins on instructor depth and version discipline on its newest course. It loses on price, refund generosity, and public proof of quality you can check before you buy.** Casey Faris's catalog wins on refund terms and a genuinely free entry point. Adi Singh's Udemy version wins on raw price. Blackmagic's own training wins on cost and currency, losing only the human teaching voice a video course provides.

None of these four options is the objectively "best" one across every column. **The right choice depends on which column actually matters to you: depth and credibility, refund safety, price, or free access with no instructor voice at all.**

## How does Ripple Training compare to Mixing Light, FXPHD, and Lowepost?

The Blackmagic Design Forum thread cited earlier groups Ripple Training with three other names as go-to resources for learning DaVinci Resolve: Mixing Light, FXPHD, and Lowepost. This review has stuck to Ripple Training, Casey Faris, and Adi Singh's catalog so far because those three compete most directly on the same axis, a structured, ordered curriculum for a beginner or intermediate editor. Mixing Light, FXPHD, and Lowepost are worth a separate look, because none of them plays by quite the same rules.

Mixing Light is built around ongoing tutorial output more than a single fixed course. Its DaVinci Resolve training program, the All-Access Accelerator, costs $349 for 12 months, explicitly billed as a one-time membership rather than a recurring subscription, and bundles five training courses, two full practice projects, and access to more than 1,100 existing tutorials and articles in its Insights library, according to [Mixing Light's own training program page](https://mixinglight.com/davinci-resolve-training-program/). That's a materially different shape than Ripple's catalog. You're not buying five fixed video courses. You're buying a year of access to a library that keeps growing while your membership is active, then keeping whatever you downloaded after it lapses.

FXPHD sells standalone Resolve courses much the way Ripple Training does, but its most recent dedicated Resolve fundamentals course, at the time of this review, is Resolve 17 Fundamentals, priced at $149 for four and a half hours of instruction, according to [FXPHD's own product page](https://www.fxphd.com/product/resolve-v17-fundamentals/) and [RedShark News's coverage of the course](https://www.redsharknews.com/learn-resolve-17-with-warren-eagles-new-courses). **FXPHD's newest Resolve fundamentals course sits four versions behind Resolve 21, a wider gap than Ripple Training's one-version lag on its Core Training.** That's the same version-drift problem this review flagged with Casey Faris's CreativeLive catalog, just at a different training studio.

Lowepost takes the subscription route at a lower price point than Mixing Light: $79 a year for access to its full course library, including its DaVinci Resolve editing and Fusion tutorials, according to [Lowepost's own membership page](https://lowepost.com/faq/premium/). That's cheaper than either of Ripple Training's bundles and cheaper than Mixing Light's Accelerator, though it trades Ripple's named, credentialed instructors for a broader, more variable roster typical of a subscription platform.

| Platform | Model | Price | What you get |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ripple Training | One-time purchase per tutorial or bundle | $179-$320 bundled | 5 fixed video courses, named specialist instructors |
| Mixing Light | 12-month membership (non-recurring) | $349 | 5 courses, 2 practice projects, 1,100+ tutorials |
| FXPHD | One-time purchase per course | $149 (Resolve 17 Fundamentals) | 4.5 hours, editing and grading combined |
| Lowepost | Annual subscription | $79/year | Full course library, editing and Fusion included |

**Lowepost is the cheapest way into structured Resolve training in this whole review, at roughly a quarter of Ripple Training's Essentials Bundle price.** What you're trading for that price is Ripple's specific instructor pedigree. Steve Martin's Blackmagic Design consulting history isn't something a $79 annual subscription with a rotating course library reliably replicates. Whether that trade is worth it depends on the same question this whole review keeps returning to: are you paying for the credential and depth behind the person teaching, or just for the information itself.

## Is Ripple Training a good fit if you want to learn DaVinci Resolve fast?

Only partly. If "fast" means getting oriented across all seven of Resolve's pages in the shortest possible runtime, the Core Training alone, at roughly half of the Essentials Bundle's 12 hours, is a reasonable single-course investment, comparable in scope to Casey Faris's four-course CreativeLive set. If "fast" means the cheapest, quickest possible path to a first edit, Ripple Training isn't the right answer. A $14.99 Udemy course, Lowepost's $79-a-year subscription, or Blackmagic's own free guides get you moving sooner, for less money, even if they trade away some of the depth Ripple's catalog is built around.

There's a real tension worth naming plainly in any answer to "learn DaVinci Resolve fast": speed and depth pull in opposite directions almost by definition. Jonny Elwyn's 2017 review flagged this exact trade-off in Ripple's own earlier catalog, praising its exhaustiveness while warning that the same thoroughness "might get a lot of information about certain things that you may or may not care about." A student optimizing purely for speed to a first competent edit is often better served by a shorter, narrower course, even a free one, than by Ripple Training's deliberately comprehensive approach.

**If your actual goal is speed to your first finished project, not comprehensive mastery of every page, Ripple Training's five-course, 20-hour Learning Path is more curriculum than that specific goal needs.** Save the full Learning Path for once you already know you're staying with Resolve long term and want the deeper, specialist-taught material on media management, audio, and Fusion.

## What about AI tools built to help you learn DaVinci Resolve, not just watch it?

A newer category has grown up alongside the traditional course market Ripple Training and its competitors sell into, and it's worth naming honestly rather than pretending it doesn't exist. Most tools in this category aren't teaching tools at all. They're automation tools, built to execute edits for you rather than to explain or correct your own decision-making.

PremiereCopilot bundles silence cuts, animated captions, and a text-to-edit assistant into Adobe Premiere Pro, executing multi-step edits from a typed prompt directly on a timeline, according to [its own site](https://www.premierecopilot.com/en). Eddie, at [heyeddie.ai](https://www.heyeddie.ai/), imports interview footage and generates rough cuts and multicam edits from a chat interface, with export support for DaVinci Resolve. CutAgent, built specifically for Resolve, turns natural-language instructions into actual timeline operations, showing each proposed change for approval before it touches your cut, per [its own product page](https://www.cutagent.ai/). Sottocut, at [sottocut.com](https://sottocut.com), automates specific editing tasks in a similar vein. All four save real time on mechanical work, but none of them are trying to teach you the software. They're trying to do the work for you, or with you.

That's a genuinely different job than what a course, Ripple Training's or anyone else's, is built around. It's also a different job than what TryUncle does. **TryUncle is the on-screen assistant for DaVinci Resolve on macOS. Ask in plain words and Uncle points at the exact control on your screen**, live, inside the Edit, Color, and Fusion pages, instead of playing back a fixed recording filmed years ago on someone else's demo clip.

That distinction matters if you're specifically searching for an app that helps you while using DaVinci Resolve, rather than beside it in a separate video window or automating it entirely. Ripple Training's tutorials, like every course covered in this review, are authored once and play back identically for everyone who buys them, frozen at whatever Resolve version was current on the day they were filmed. TryUncle has no fixed curriculum at all, because it's reasoning about whatever you're actually stuck on, on your own project, in the moment you're stuck. It's currently in founder pricing, $29.99 a month for the first 100 seats, cancel anytime, and it's macOS only with no offline mode, since the reasoning that understands your screen runs in the cloud (source: TryUncle's FAQ).

**An AI tool that edits your timeline for you and an AI tool that teaches you to edit it yourself are solving opposite problems, and neither is the same job a paid video course does.** If you want the mechanical work done faster, an automation tool like CutAgent, Sottocut, or PremiereCopilot fits. If you want to actually get better at DaVinci Resolve on your own footage, with something watching and correcting your specific decision, that's a live tutor's job, not a course's and not an automation tool's either.

## Is a video course, even a well-made one, the best way to learn DaVinci Resolve?

Not entirely, and the research on this is more settled than the course marketplace generally lets on. Watching a well-explained demonstration, the kind Jonny Elwyn praised in Ripple's earlier catalog, builds recognition: your brain matches what's on screen against something familiar, and that match feels like understanding in the moment. It's a different mental operation than recall, which is what happens when your own project is open, nothing paused beside it, and you have to generate the decision yourself. A course, no matter how technically exhaustive, mostly trains the first one directly.

That's the exact mechanism our deeper research piece on [the best way to learn DaVinci Resolve](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/best-way-to-learn-davinci-resolve) traces through deliberate practice, constructionism, and retrieval-practice research. It's not a criticism unique to Ripple Training's catalog. It applies to every pre-recorded video course covered anywhere on this hub, including the ones with friendlier refunds and lower prices. **Guided practice inside Resolve beats watching courses about Resolve**, not because Ripple's courses are badly made, but because watching and doing are different skills, and only doing transfers cleanly to your own footage.

This is where an assistant that helps you while you're actually using DaVinci Resolve, rather than beside it in a paused video window, does a different job than any course in this review can. None of that makes Ripple Training's catalog worthless. Steve Martin's Blackmagic Design consulting history and the team's specialist depth on media management, audio, and Fusion are real, checkable strengths that a free YouTube channel or a $14.99 Udemy course generally can't match. It means the course is solving a genuinely different part of the problem than live, in-project correction solves, and it's worth being honest about which part you actually need before you spend $320 on either one.

## Who is Ripple Training's course actually best for?

It splits fairly cleanly by where you're starting from and what you're optimizing for.

| Your situation | Best fit | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Complete beginner, zero budget | Blackmagic's free official training | Same underlying facts, no cost, no refund risk |
| Beginner ready to invest, wants technical depth over speed | Ripple Training's Essentials Bundle ($179) | Steve Martin's Blackmagic Design consulting history, page-by-page thoroughness |
| Already editing, needs media management, audio, or Fusion specifically | Ripple Training's Masters Bundle ($320) | The only catalog in this comparison with dedicated, specialist-taught tutorials on all three |
| Wants the cheapest possible single course | Adi Singh's Udemy "20 Masterclass" ($14.99) | A fraction of Ripple's price for broadly similar page-by-page coverage |
| Wants a generous, low-risk refund window | Casey Faris's Ground Control End to End ($249.99, 30-day cash refund) | Ripple's store-credit-only policy is the weakest refund term in this comparison |
| Wants an ongoing, growing library instead of five fixed courses | Lowepost ($79/year) or Mixing Light's All-Access Accelerator ($349/12 months) | Subscription access to a broader, continuously updated tutorial catalog |
| Wants to actually sit Blackmagic's certification exam | Either Ripple Training's Core Training or Blackmagic's own free training | Both lead to the same free exam; Ripple just builds in the link |
| Stuck mid-project, right now, on something specific | None of the above, on its own | No pre-recorded course, at any price, can react to your exact footage in the moment |

**Ripple Training's catalog is strongest exactly where its instructors' real credentials point: technical depth, specialist coverage of pages other courses skip, and a founder with direct Blackmagic Design consulting experience.** It's weakest exactly where a small, direct-sale studio without a marketplace's platform-wide refund guarantee tends to be weak: price, refund safety, and public proof of quality you can check before you commit any money.

## Does Ripple Training's course work the same outside the US?

Mostly yes, with the same money caveat that applies to nearly every course reviewed on this hub. Every tutorial in Ripple Training's Learning Path is on-demand video, so time zone doesn't affect access at all. Press play at any hour, anywhere, and the lesson plays exactly the same way it would in Prescott, Arizona, where the company is based.

Pricing is where geography actually changes something. Ripple Training's $179 and $320 bundle prices are quoted in US dollars, so your actual out-of-pocket cost outside the US also depends on your card issuer's conversion rate and any foreign transaction fee layered on top of the sticker price, the same dynamic covered in our reviews of Casey Faris's and Adi Singh's catalogs. Given that Ripple's refund policy is already the narrowest one in this comparison, a non-US buyer facing an unfavorable exchange rate has less room to recover value from a refund request than a customer buying Casey Faris's course, where a stated 30-day cash-back window at least gives you a clear, documented process to fall back on.

Hardware matters here too, and it's worth checking before buying any DaVinci Resolve course, this one included. On macOS, Resolve 21 requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, at least 8 GB of system memory (16 GB for Fusion work), and either an Apple Silicon Mac or a GPU that supports Metal. On Windows, the floor is higher: Windows 10 Creators Update or later, 16 GB of system memory (32 GB for Fusion), and a GPU with at least 4 GB of VRAM supporting OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 12.8, with NVIDIA cards needing Studio driver 570.65 or newer specifically, according to [Blackmagic's own tech specs page](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/techspecs). **A $320 course bundle says nothing about whether your laptop can actually keep up with the Fusion and color grading exercises inside it.** Check your machine against Blackmagic's own minimums before spending anything, on Ripple Training or any other catalog.

## Decision table: which path actually fits your situation

Here's the full comparison collapsed into one table you can act on directly.

| Your situation | Best path | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Zero budget, first orientation | Blackmagic's free official training | No cost, no refund risk, written by the software's own maker |
| Want technical depth and don't mind paying full price | Ripple Training's Masters Bundle ($320) | Specialist-taught coverage of editing, color, media management, audio, and Fusion |
| Want the cheapest single structured course | Adi Singh's Udemy "20 Masterclass" ($14.99) | A fraction of Ripple's cost for broadly similar page-by-page scope |
| Want a generous refund if the course isn't a fit | Casey Faris's Ground Control End to End ($249.99) | Stated 30-day, no-questions-asked cash refund |
| Want to finish one complete real production | Casey Faris's Ground Control End to End | 18+ hours built around one real short film, not isolated demos |
| Want the cheapest ongoing library, not a fixed course | Lowepost ($79/year) | Cheapest structured Resolve training in this review, broader but less credentialed than Ripple |
| Need Resolve 21's newest tools covered menu-by-menu | None of the current catalogs fully deliver this | Ripple's newest course is one version behind; FXPHD's is four versions behind; others are further |
| Want to sit Blackmagic's certification exam | Ripple Training's Core Training, or Blackmagic's free training directly | Same free exam either way; Ripple adds a guided link at 80% completion |
| Stuck right now on your own specific project | A live tutor like TryUncle, not another course | Only something watching your actual screen corrects your exact mistake |
| Want structure and live correction together | A course plus TryUncle | The two solve different halves of the same problem |

Read down that "why" column and the pattern holds together the same way it has across every course this hub has reviewed. Ripple Training wins the scenarios built around depth, specialist coverage, and instructor credibility with real ties back to Blackmagic Design itself. It loses on price and refund safety to nearly everything else in the category, Ripple Training included against Lowepost and Mixing Light's subscription models. And like every catalog in this comparison, it hits its ceiling the moment the real question becomes "what's wrong with my footage, right now," a question no fixed video, however technically exhaustive, was ever built to answer.

## So, is Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve course worth it?

Yes, for a specific kind of buyer, and no for others, which is the honest shape of the answer rather than a flat verdict either way. Ripple Training's real strength is real: a founder with over 20 years of experience who has directly consulted for Blackmagic Design, an Apple-certified Wharton MBA teaching Fusion, a senior editor teaching dedicated Fairlight sound tutorials, and a decade-old independent review that called the studio's teaching "the manual on video" for its exhaustive, feature-by-feature depth. That's a genuinely different pedigree than most of the competing catalogs this hub has reviewed, and it shows up in the deliberate structure of the Learning Path, which covers ground, media management and audio specifically, that most general bootcamps skip entirely.

The honest catch is price and risk. At $179 for the Essentials Bundle and $320 for the full Masters Bundle, Ripple Training costs meaningfully more than Casey Faris's flagship course, Lowepost's yearly subscription, and dramatically more than Adi Singh's Udemy version, and its refund policy, case by case, store credit only, offers less protection than either competitor if the course turns out not to fit. Its flagship Core Training is one version behind Resolve 21, the smallest gap in this comparison, but the rest of the Learning Path spans version eras going back to Resolve 16/17, which means you're buying a set of snapshots in time, not one unified, current curriculum.

Don't take this review's word over your own situation. If technical depth, specialist teaching, and a real connection back to the people who build the software matter more to you than price or refund safety, Ripple Training's catalog is a legitimate, credible option, and the Essentials Bundle is the sensible place to start. If you're price-sensitive or want a documented refund window before you commit, Casey Faris's End to End course, Lowepost's subscription, or Adi Singh's Udemy masterclass make more financial sense for broadly similar ground. And if you've already worked through a course, this one or another, and keep hitting the same wall on your own actual footage, that's the specific gap no course in this review, at any price, was built to close, and it's worth weighing a live source of correction, whether that's an active community or [TryUncle](https://tryuncle.com/?utm_source=learn&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=is-ripple-training-s-davinci-resolve-course-worth-it) watching your screen, against what you're actually stuck on right now.

## FAQ

### Is Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve course worth it?

Yes, if what you want is technically exhaustive, feature-by-feature training built by people with real cross-platform credibility, including a founder who has consulted for Blackmagic Design itself. It's a weaker fit if you want the cheapest possible option, a generous refund, or menu-accurate coverage of DaVinci Resolve 21's newest tools, since the flagship Core Training is still built on Resolve 20.

### Who teaches Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve courses?

Steve Martin, Ripple Training's founder, teaches the Core Training and Color Grading courses. He has over 20 years of experience as an editor and trainer and has consulted or trained for Apple, Adobe, Blackmagic Design, Disney, Canon, and Sony, according to his own instructor page. Mark Spencer, an Apple-certified instructor with an MBA from Wharton, teaches the Fusion tutorials, and Travis Richmond, Ripple's senior editor since 2012, teaches the Fairlight sound tutorials.

### How much does Ripple Training's DaVinci Resolve course cost?

The two foundational tutorials, Core Training and Color Grading, cost $278 bought individually or $179 as the Essentials Bundle. All five tutorials in the DaVinci Resolve Learning Path, adding Media Management, Sound Editing, and Fusion, cost $495 individually or $320 as the Masters Bundle, according to Ripple Training's own bundle pages. Ripple Training also lets you build a custom bundle of any 2 or more tutorials at a smaller, tiered discount if you don't want all five.

### Can I get a refund from Ripple Training if the course isn't right for me?

Only store credit, and only case by case. Ripple Training's own FAQ states that refunds are handled individually and issued as store credit, not cash, which is a narrower policy than Casey Faris's Ground Control End to End course (a stated 30-day, no-questions-asked cash refund) or even Skillshare's limited trial-window refund.

### Is Ripple Training's course updated for DaVinci Resolve 21, or still built on an older version?

Still built on older versions, and not just by one release. The flagship is titled DaVinci Resolve 20 Core Training, one version behind Resolve 21, which shipped in June 2026. The rest of the Learning Path is older still: Media Management is built on Resolve 19, Sound Editing on Resolve 18, and Warp Speed Fusion on Resolve 16/17, according to their own product pages.

### Does Ripple Training's course lead to an actual DaVinci Resolve certification?

It can. Completing 80% of the Core Training unlocks a link to Blackmagic Design's own certification exam: 50 of 120 possible questions, a 60-minute time limit, an 85% passing score, open-book format, ending in a Certificate of Achievement and a Certified End User designation, per Ripple Training's own support documentation. That same exam is also free through Blackmagic's own training page, independent of buying anything from Ripple. Only lessons watched inside Ripple's own online player count toward that 80% threshold, not lessons downloaded and watched offline.

### Is Ripple Training better than Casey Faris's courses, Mixing Light, or the Udemy and Skillshare masterclasses?

They're not really competing on the same axis. Ripple Training goes deeper and more technical, with real Blackmagic Design consulting credibility behind it, but costs more and refunds less generously. Casey Faris's free YouTube channel and $249.99 End to End course are cheaper entry points with a friendlier refund window. Adi Singh's Udemy course is the cheapest one-time purchase, and Lowepost's $79-a-year subscription is the cheapest ongoing library. None of them watch your actual project.

### Is there an AI tool that helps while I'm actually using DaVinci Resolve, instead of just watching a course?

Yes. TryUncle is the on-screen assistant for DaVinci Resolve on macOS. It watches your live screen and points at the exact control you need, inside the Edit, Color, and Fusion pages, instead of playing back a fixed recording. It's a paid subscription, currently $29.99 a month under founder pricing for the first 100 seats, and it solves a different problem than any video course: correcting your specific mistake in the moment, not teaching an ordered curriculum from zero.

## Sources

- [DaVinci Resolve 20 Core Training (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-20-core-training/)
- [Color Grading in DaVinci Resolve 20 (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/color-grading-in-davinci-resolve-20/)
- [DaVinci Resolve Essentials Bundle (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-essentials-bundle/)
- [DaVinci Resolve Masters Bundle (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-masters-bundle/)
- [DaVinci Resolve Learning Path (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/product-category/davinci-resolve-learning-path/)
- [Media Management in DaVinci Resolve 19 (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/media-management-in-davinci-resolve-19/)
- [Sound Editing in Fairlight Resolve 18 (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/sound-editing-in-fairlight-resolve-18/)
- [Warp Speed Fusion in DaVinci Resolve 16/17 (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/warp-speed-fusion/)
- [Steve Martin, instructor page (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/instructors/steve-martin/)
- [Mark Spencer, instructor page (Ripple Training)](https://www.rippletraining.com/instructors/mark-spencer/)
- [What is Ripple Training's return policy? (Ripple Training FAQ)](https://www.rippletraining.com/blog/faq-items/what-is-ripple-trainings-return-policy/)
- [How do I download the lessons for my tutorial? (Ripple Training FAQ)](https://www.rippletraining.com/blog/faq-items/how-do-i-download-the-lessons-for-my-tutorial/)
- [DaVinci Resolve 18 101 Certification FAQ (Ripple Training Knowledge Base)](https://support.rippletraining.com/article/77-dvr-18-test-faqs)
- [Ripple Training - Company Profile (Tracxn)](https://tracxn.com/d/companies/ripple-training/__TVpxFcgPEmitcK3411ExsXoKTXYdeF2S3HhIIdiEMcM)
- [Recommendations for DR18 courses? (Blackmagic Design Forum)](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=192139)
- [DaVinci Resolve 14 Training Courses Reviewed (Jonny Elwyn, Film Editor)](https://jonnyelwyn.co.uk/film-and-video-editing/davinci-resolve-14-training-courses-reviewed/)
- [DaVinci Resolve 21 Officially Released With New Photo Editing, AI Tools, and Much More (PetaPixel)](https://petapixel.com/2026/06/03/davinci-resolve-21-officially-released-with-new-photo-editing-ai-tools-and-much-more/)
- [DaVinci Resolve Training (Blackmagic Design)](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/training)
- [DaVinci Resolve - Studio (Blackmagic Design)](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/studio)
- [DaVinci Resolve - Tech Specs (Blackmagic Design)](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/techspecs)
- [Blackmagic Publishes Comprehensive Free DaVinci Resolve 20 Training Guides (RedShark News)](https://www.redsharknews.com/blackmagic-davinci-resolve-20-training-guides)
- [DaVinci Resolve All-Access Training Program (Mixing Light)](https://mixinglight.com/davinci-resolve-training-program/)
- [Resolve 17 Fundamentals (fxphd)](https://www.fxphd.com/product/resolve-v17-fundamentals/)
- [Learn Resolve 17 with Warren Eagles' new courses (RedShark News)](https://www.redsharknews.com/learn-resolve-17-with-warren-eagles-new-courses)
- [Premium Membership FAQ (Lowepost)](https://lowepost.com/faq/premium/)
- [PremiereCopilot - The AI Copilot for Adobe Premiere Pro](https://www.premierecopilot.com/en)
- [Eddie AI - The Assistant Video Editor for Pros (heyeddie.ai)](https://www.heyeddie.ai/)
- [CutAgent - AI video editing for DaVinci Resolve](https://www.cutagent.ai/)
- [Sottocut](https://sottocut.com)
- [TryUncle FAQ](https://tryuncle.com/faq)